No one can hear you thri.., p.32
No One Can Hear You Thrive, page 32
"Didn't they say there were rooms somewhere?" Hunt whispered. Her eyes were stuck on the ceiling overhead as she slowly spun around in place. We got a few glares from those sitting close enough to hear us, despite Hunt keeping her voice low.
"They're over there, I think," Kenya said, pointing further into the space. Pointing towards where the private desks would have been back in the high school library. But as the main space seemed to take up the entirety of the building, further in seemed as good of a direction as any.
"We're not really going to be studying all weekend, are we?" Porter asked, as we started to pick our way around the desks in the center. There didn't seem to be a proper pattern to the desks, allowing people to easily pass through the open space. It seemed like the people there had moved them around to allow for larger groups to be together. The huddled heads around them made it hard to see the way through. The place was almost a maze. "I mean, you guys got to go off base yesterday. I kind of figured I'd go out on Sunday to see stuff."
"You're free to head off all weekend," I said. "But, no, I have no intention of getting any studying done. I'm hoping that, if we manage to find out enough details, we won't need to worry about super hard tests anymore."
"What? We're going to stop the conspiracy before Friday?" Hunt asked. "I like the sound of that. I mean, we have two more weeks before I fail out of the program, but I'd like to not have to worry about that. They never said anything about failing the first two. Wasn't there something about not failing more than half?"
"They never did explain when that would kick in," Porter said.
"Shh," came a hiss from the shelves as we made our way through the library.
Once we made it through the back set of bookshelves, we came out along the far wall. The ceiling had come down towards us, marking off where the next floor up was. Still, even that was almost two stories above us, reaching up higher than any ceiling had a right to be. The far wall itself was, once again, full of shelves. Full of books. But hanging down from the ceiling overhead was a sign, marking the direction to the study rooms and the back exit of the place. I pointed up at it before leading the way further into the space.
In the back, right corner of the main room was a single metal door. The bookshelves came right up next to it, and all along the wall above it. Another sign leading towards the private rooms hung above it, marking this as the way towards them. As I came over to the door, I glanced back at Kenya, wondering if she were counting all the books in the place or calculating how many books would fit across the space that the door was in. However, she just seemed to be looking at me. And when she noticed my attention turn towards her, she blushed. I gave her a questioning look, not knowing what she was blushing about, but she didn't respond to it.
The sound of the door opening echoed around the space beyond, declaring it to be a stairwell as easily as my sight would have. To my right was the exit, marked with the usual bright red sign. But to my left was another sign for the private rooms, pointing towards the stairs leading down.
"The basement?" Porter asked. There was a slight catch in his voice at the mention of it, making me think that basements somehow made him uncomfortable. Maybe it was the close quarters or the typical dankness. Either way, he'd have to get over it if he was going to make it in the fleet.
"Relax," Hunt said. She took his hand, leading him along with the rest of us. "I won't let anything hurt you down there."
"I hate being the odd person out," Brit muttered as she followed us through. "Fifth wheel, ninth wheel. No real difference."
"So, if we're not going to be studying, just what are we doing in here?" Porter asked, as I led the way down the stairs.
"Not here," I whispered. I looked up the stairwell, through the small space between the railings in the center. I could just see the solid stone ceiling through it, all three or so huge stories above us. "Even this place can have ears everywhere."
"I'd say you're being paranoid," Hunt said. "But given the fact that we're trying to thwart a conspiracy, I'd say you have a right to be. Just what is it we're up against? Is it just demons trying to fail us? They have to have their reasons, right?"
"They're demons," Brit said. "Torturing us is their reason."
"No," I said. "There's more to it. They want control of the entire fleet. If only demons pass tests in the academy, then only demons can be officers. It was the same thing at CT school, with them trying to control who gets the classified orders and intelligence. Think about it, if the demons are in charge of decoding orders, it doesn't matter who's giving them."
Brit missed a step on the stairs as we came downwards. Her hand grabbed the railing, causing it to ring out and fill the space with echoes. She stared at me in shock as the thought played out through her head. Even Kenya seemed a bit surprised by this thought, despite us talking it out the day before. Perhaps she had missed that part of it. I nearly missed that implication myself.
"But who cares if they control the fleet?" Porter asked. "I mean, other than we do, because we'd be taking orders from them."
As we continued down the stairs, I explained my thoughts on the issue. The worries that had been playing out in my head since I realized the full scope of what was at stake. Brit and Hunt seemed just as quick to add in their own thoughts on the subject, with words of attacks on colonies not only from the Delnadians, but from the demons as well. With both sides holding the rest of the colonies hostage, threatening to blow up our very way of life if we didn't give in to their demands. By the time we made the lower floor, Porter was just as worried about the conspiracy as the rest of us were.
"I want to go back to just thinking they're out to fail us," Porter said. "Failing tests seems less scary."
"But what exactly are we going to be doing then?" Hunt asked.
I shook my head, sticking a finger in front of my lips as we came out into the basement. On the other side of the door were two hallways, one leading straight and the other off to the right. They both headed off into the distance, seeming to wrap around the center. With the outer wall being the solid brick frame of the building, the inner section would be the only place that there were rooms. I could make out several doors in both directions. As they each seemed as likely to lead somewhere as the other, I led the way forward.
We passed by several doors, all marked occupied in the smart paint. With the crowd around the desks above, I was starting to worry that the entire place would be taken up. But halfway down the hallway, it branched off to the right, making the place more like four quadrants of rooms rather than one large block. We headed off in that direction, spotting an open room just three down from the junction. I opened the door, but held the hallway, my eyes looking back and forth, up and down the corridor as my friends headed inside. Once I was certain that we hadn't been spotted, I followed them in and closed the door.
On the inside of the door, there was a button in the smart paint that allowed you to mark the door occupied, as well as the dumbed down smart device that powered it. The thing was the size of my thumb, but it was enough to work everything that the room needed. There was even a button to turn off the lights, though without any windows or other sources of light in the room, I wasn't sure why anyone would. I quickly pressed the button to mark the room occupied, but I was a little nervous when the door didn't lock behind us. There wasn't anything on the inside to do so, either. Instead, I had to resort to sticking one of the chairs under the handle, hoping that would be enough.
"Well?" Hunt asked, as I turned around to the others. They had already sat down around the table, which took up most of the room in the center. Kenya was sitting to the left of the head of the table, with Hunt on the right. They both patted the head, indicating that I should take it.
"Kenya, did you bring it?" I asked.
"Of course," she said. She looked at the others for a moment, hesitant to trust them with what had happened the night before. I was too, but without their help we wouldn't be able to do anything. Without their help, we'd be lost.
More importantly, without Brit's help.
"Brit, you're an ET, right?" I asked, pointing towards her sleeve.
"Uh... yea?" she asked more than said.
"What do you know about hacking into smart devices?"
Kenya placed Ensign Rodriguez's smart device in the center of the table. The table automatically picked it up as an input, displaying the default screen for it. Ensign Rodriguez's face stared up at us from his home page, along with some woman who I figured would be missing him already. I had no idea who she was, but I promised her silently to myself that we'd get to the bottom of everything. For her, if not for ourselves.
"Why-why do you have Ensign Rodriguez's smart device?" Brit asked.
With a final look passed between Kenya and me, I sat down in the chair at the head of the table before catching the rest of our friends up on just how bad things were. Just how much was set against us in clearing up this conspiracy.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Investigation
"Do you ever think before doing these things?" Hunt asked. "I mean, breaking into the processing center back at basic was one thing. But this?"
"Yes, I think before doing things," I said. "I overthink about these kinds of things sometimes. It doesn't help when reacting to things coming at you unless you've already planned for those specific things."
"Just be glad we didn't need to go to Plan X," Kenya said. She laughed at her comment, despite the seriousness of what we were talking about.
"Can we not fight right now?" Brit asked. "I'm trying to concentrate."
She was already hard at work trying to break into the smart device. The display had been shoved aside, pushed off into the corner of the table, while several others were spread around in front of her. She was typing something up quickly, though when I tried to read it, it didn't make any sense to me. And I knew thirteen languages. This wasn't one of them. But the English words mixed in with the rest of them made my mind keep trying to make sense of it. However, the language, whatever it was, clearly wasn't meant to be understood by people. It was meant to be understood by machines.
"What are you even doing?" Hunt asked. She was looking over her shoulder at the display, looking similarly confused as I was.
"I'm trying to find a backdoor into the system. It's obviously some kind of database, though I'm not sure what it's running on. Probably Aqual, but I won't know for sure until I get into it."
"Well, while she's trying to get into that system, I figured the rest of us could try to find information on the other demon," I said. "The one that we heard the name of last night. Harding. I hadn't gotten a chance to do any real searching on him yet."
I placed my implant on the table, pulling my own display up. The display from the ensign's device shifted, moving closer to the displays that Brit was using. She barely glanced over at it as she swiped it across to the far side of the table. She didn't seem the least bit interested in using that.
Kenya, Hunt, and Porter all pulled out their own devices, placing them on the display that was quickly getting crowded. Brit shifted over another seat, coming to the far corner of the table, so as to get away from the rest of us. Hunt eyed Porter out of the corner of her eye, though I wasn't sure what that was about. What silent message passed between them. Brit's earlier words of her being an extra wheel seemed to come to a whole different meaning.
I pulled up my usual search engines, the ones that I had used when I was searching for the last conspiracy. I also tried to send an email to the weird conspiracy theorist that had reached out to me last time, J0k3n@t0r82. But the email bounced almost instantly, making it clear that he was no longer reachable there. As I focused on my own searches, I privately hoped that he'd somehow reach out to me again. Not that his help last time had kept me from needing to break onto the base and into the processing center again.
"Major Harding," Hunt said, pointing to her own display. "On staff at the academy, so this is probably our guy." She tapped her display three times before swiping it around her, sending copies to the three of us. I glanced down at the pic, confirming that it was the same guy, before swiping it away. "First name Gop, poor guy. Looks like he's relatively new here, been at the academy for just under a year. This is his first onworld assignment during his time in the fleet. He was on the Estrange before this."
"Oh, yea, he's definitely a demon," Brit said, taking her eyes off her own display to glance over at Hunt. "He's been on... Well, I know a group that's been tracking certain demons known to have... anti-alliance tendencies? Shall we say? They've known about this guy already."
"Oh, please tell me you're not in Remember Sami," I said, remembering the old group that I had stumbled upon last time. It seemed to be some kind of hate group targeted at demons, often to dangerous and deadly results.
"Wait, that's still around?" Hunt asked, looking between Brit and me. "You're not in it, are you?"
"What's Remember Sami?" Kenya asked.
"It's an old hate group against demons, started by hulandans, when the demons first arrived. I remember my grandma telling me stuff about it. How it got out of hand once the pure bloods took it over after the Delnadian Mage War. I think it was named after a member of the first generation, one of those people infected by the spores when they first came to Earth."
"No, I'm not in Remember Sami," Brit said. "Though I have heard of them. And I'm not really part of the group I'm talking about. I couldn't be, not while joining the fleet. But I grew up around them, so I'm still in contact. And they say that Harding, along with another eight or so demons that are assigned here, could be in on the conspiracy."
"Well, that's something at least," I said. "Do they have a list of names?" I wondered if they knew about Captain Venkman, but she wasn't assigned to the academy.
"They're not even sure about the numbers," Brit said, shaking her head. She looked down at her display, tapping a message back to them. It seemed like the response was quick, suggesting that the group was stationed on Earth. I was pretty sure that Brit wasn't from Earth, though. "They'll look into it, but it might take them some time."
"Time that we don't have," Hunt said. "Unfortunately, the only known associates I can pull up on this guy are these two. I'm pretty sure these are the ones that... were killed last night."
She sent more pictures around to the group, though she was doing her best not to look at me while she did. I tried to focus on my own display, to not look at the demons in front of me. Not see their faces again. But their eyes stalked me once more. They drew me towards them, staring back at me from the display. They were more alive in those snapshots, pictures from their fleet records, than they had been the last time that I saw them.
"Yea," I said, swiping the pics aside. "That's them."
Kenya reached out her hand to mine, squeezing it where it was resting awkwardly on the table. My implant lost connection with the table for a moment, just long enough for my display to go all wonky before returning to its normal alignment. I gave her a small, strained smile, silently thanking her for her continued support.
"I don't even know what I'm looking for," Kenya said.
She flicked her hand against the surface of the table, disrupting her own display. I glanced over at it, seeing the same search tool that I was using. The same two million results that I had to look through. Nothing was jumping out at me in any of them, but I saw that she was only on page three while I had made it through to page twenty-five. Perhaps her more intense scrutiny might pick up something that I'd miss. But I wasn't sure what else to do at that point. Where else to look. My automated searches were running in the background, trying to find more strenuous connections between Harding, the academy, and any conspiracy between them.
"Yea, it is pretty thin," Hunt said, nodding. "Maybe if we had something else to go on. How did you handle this back at basic?"
"Without the internet," I said. "Why do you think I had to break into the processing center? Twice. It's not like you can just search 'Harding Demon Test Conspiracy' and find a link to a social gathering where they're going to discuss the oncoming attempts to fail everyone in the fleet."
"Oh, there it is," Porter said. We all looked over at him. I almost expected him to come back with that list of co-conspirators. Instead, he just looked up at us with a broad smile. "Sorry, couldn't help it. I got nothing."
I couldn't help but smile as the joke played through my head. At the same time, I adjusted my displays, so that the background search of "Harding Demon Test Conspiracy" wouldn't be so prominent. As I did, I noticed that it had already pulled up twenty results. It would take a while to find the rest of them, as it was doing a deep scan of the web as a whole, rather than relying on the usual search engines. It was one of those automated searches that led me to J0k3n@t0r82 in the first place.
"It took me the better part of a day the first time, once I was kicked out of basic," I said. "And I came to all dead ends. We've barely been at it for twenty millies this time. We should settle in for a long day of it. If we're able to find anything at all, I'd be pleasantly surprised. But without knowing anything about this guy, we'd just have to wait around for when he's out in public and alone. If there are eight other people in on the conspiracy, that's probably not going to happen anytime soon."
"He was alone earlier," Kenya said. "When we saw him in the mess. It looked like he was waiting for someone."
"Yea, the two dead guys," Porter said.
"Ah hah," Brit called out, causing me to jump. Her words, seeming to come out of nowhere, made my heart jump out of my chest. But as we all turned towards her, giving her our undivided attention, she just kept plugging away at her display. After a few decrons, I figured that her exclamation had been for her own benefit, rather than to get our attentions.
